Printing devices, such as printers, copy machines, and multi-function peripherals (MFPs) such as the Ricoh Aficio Color 6513 system, sometimes are capable of storing print jobs for later printing. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/346,479 describes a technique through which a print job may be sent, over a network, from a computer to a printing device and stored on a hard drive within the printing device. Although the print job is stored at the printing device, the print job is not immediately printed at the printing device. Some time after the print job has been stored at the printing device, a user who caused the print job to be sent to the printing device may enter, through a console at the printing device, a username and password combination that is associated with the print job. After the user enters the correct username and password combination at the printing device's console, the user can instruct the printing device to print the stored print job. Such a “locked” printing technique promotes security by preventing sensitive information from being deposited into a printing device's output tray until the user who wanted the information printed is able to be present at the printing device.
The foregoing technique works well as long as the user is able to physically access the printing device at which the print job has been stored by the time the user needs to obtain the printed copy of the print job. Unfortunately, if the user is not able to physically access this printing device, then the user may be unable to obtain the printed copy when the user needs the printed copy. For example, if the user is working temporarily at an office of his company other than the office at which the user normally works, then the user might not be able to access, physically, the console of the printing device at which the user's print job has been stored. Thus, even if the printing devices at both offices are connected via a network, the user may be unable to obtain a printed copy of his print job while physically away from the printing device at which his print job is stored.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a technique that allows a user to print a previously stored print job at a printing device that the user currently is able to access physically when the user currently is unable to access physically the printing device at which the print job was previously stored.